The+Power+of+Language


 * How are social identity, power, and academic literacy related?**

“//Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.//” -Schopenhuaer

If this is true, and I believe that it is, one of the forms those limits take is the form of language as it acts as the lens through which we see the world. The world we inhabit takes the form of the world we can describe, discuss or debate. Language either liberates us or limits us. Over and over throughout the course we have seen the relationship between society, the individual, class and gender as it relates to language and literacy. We have read different theories of how this relationship takes place over the course of our lives. But we have also read first hand accounts of the very personal way this relationship can affect the lives of people. The stories in __The Skin That We Speak__ serve to drive home, on a very personal level, exactly how detrimental the lack of literacy can be. The accounts of Dowdy, Purcell-Gates, and Wynne stick out to me in particular. Each of these cases shows that language and literacy impact our lives in such profound ways so as to either connect us to the rest of the world or provide the means of alienation from it. The job of the English and Language Arts teacher then becomes an imperative task of providing students with the tools they will need to live in the world. We have the responsibility to teach these skills lest we assign them to a marginalized life. On a personal note; in speaking with a friend the other day they told me about an immigrant Guatemalan family they know. They were telling me that the family might have to sell their home to pay off the interest on a loan they had been talked into taking at a high rate a few years ago. My friend, after looking over the details of their loan, was convinced that they had not been treated fairly- they were sure that the family had been taken advantage of and talked into taking the much higher rate by someone who knew full well that they had a limited ability to speak English. Cases like this all are, sadly, all too plentiful. However, they illustrate perfectly just how deeply related language is to the larger culture of power and how easily our roles in that system are determined by our ability to speak and comprehend the language of that hierarchy. Naturally, to combat this is no easy task- classrooms today as we have seen are composed of highly diverse ethnic backgrounds, skill sets and abilities. What I have come to realize over the months of this semester is that the essential task of the teacher is to know his or her students and constantly find a way to relate with them and find the methods of teaching that will speak directly to them. But, also, I think it is just as important to give students the explicit knowledge that they need to have at least some level of mastery of the elements of Formal or Standard English; so long as they want to be treated with respect and dignity and be able to take the place in society that is rightfully theirs. Students need to know exactly what they are up against in terms of the prejudices held about language and the direct influence they can have over themselves and their lives.